Suzanne Harrington: Four of my favourite things in lockdown

Our columnist Kickstarts the Julie Andrews in her by listing her favourite things in lockdown.

“In case no one told you today: life is decay; you are expendable; nothing happens for a reason; you’re going to die; you will be forgotten; it will be like you never existed.” Wow, cheers, whoever posted that on Facebook. They forgot to add the bit about humans being atomic particles pinned by gravity to a speck of rock floating in infinite space.

And if that doesn’t kickstart the Julie Andrews in you and prompt you to list a few of your favourite things, then I don’t know what will. I’ll start:

Being an alcoholic, because it means getting to sit in face-to-face meetings with real people, comparing lockdown relapses (don’t bother, would be my free advice — when life gives you lemons, don’t add vodka, or you’ll end up in the chair next to mine). Still, at least we’d get to see each other unpixellated. Right now, being in the same space without buffering makes alcoholism feel worth it; all those years spent falling off barstools (remember barstools?) were in fact leading to a time where you could sit in a freezing cold room with other humans when everyone else is stuck on Zoom. You could end up feeling quite smug. I know I am.

Suzanne Harrington.

Dogs in recovery are a thing at the moment, not because they have been adding vodka to their meaty chunks, but because the usual gatekeepers of church halls are working from home, and there is nobody around to enforce any potential no-dogs rule. So we all bring our dogs to meetings with us, from street drinker staffies to chihuahuas in handbags. It’s like alcoholic Crufts but without the judging.

DIY coffee has made us all our own baristas. You don’t have to be a problem drinker to have transferred your powerlessness over alcohol directly to powerlessness over caffeine, so you’ll be aware of just how much money you’re saving by making it at home for nothing and carrying it around with you in a flask, like someone from the olden days. Depending on the seriousness of your addiction, you may have bought a frother thing, or even crowd-funded a kickass coffee machine off the internet. By the time coffee shops reopen, you’ll be skilled enough to run one. It’d probably be full of alcoholics and their dogs.

Daffodils are currently bringing out the Julie Andrews in all of us. You may never have noticed a daffodil in your life, other than at school being force-fed some stupid poem about them by someone — probably in lockdown — wandering lonely as a cloud, but this year we are pointing them out to each other with hysteria-tinged enthusiasm. Look, the daffodils are up! What we most likely mean is, look, there is an end in sight to our current situation, symbolised by the emergence of these yellow flowers! Or maybe that’s just me. Whatever. I have never been bothered about daffodils, but this year they suggest something bright and hopeful. Like Julie Andrews coming over the hills.